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McCoy is a common surname of unrelated Scottish and Irish origin. It was anglicized into the Scottish name from the Irish McGee and McHugh surnames in Irish Mac Aodha. It is an Anglicisation of its Irish form Mac Aodha, meaning son of Aodh (a name of a deity in Irish mythology and an Irish word for "fire"). The first bearers of the surname Mac Aodha were the grandsons of Aodh (died 1033), who was a son of Ruaidhrí mac Coscraigh, King of South Connacht, Ireland. The surname McCoy in Ulster however particularly in Northern Ireland is most likely from the gallowglass, Scottish mercenaries who came to Ireland in the 14th century, and the Scottish MacKays that arrived later in the 17th and 18th centuries in the Ulster plantations and became McCoys.